In music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, a sixteenth note (American) or semiquaver (also occasionally demiquaver) is a note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

 played for one sixteenth the duration of a whole note

Whole note

thumb|right|250px|Figure 1. A whole note and a whole rest.In music, a whole note or semibreve is a note represented by a hollow oval note head, like a half note , and no note stem . Its length is equal to four beats in 4/4 time...

, hence the name. The semiquaver is half of a quaver which is an eighth note.

Sixteenth notes are notated with an oval, filled-in note head

Note head

In music, a note head is the elliptical part of a note. Noteheads may be coloured completely black or white, indicating the note value . In a whole note, the note head is the only component of the note. Shorter note values attach a stem to the note head, and possibly beams or flags...

 and a straight note stem with two flags. (see Figure 1). A similar symbol is the sixteenth rest (or semiquaver rest), which denotes a silence for the same duration. As with all notes with stems, sixteenth notes are drawn with stems to the right of the notehead, facing up, when they are below the middle line of the musical staff. When they are on or above the middle line, they are drawn with stems on the left of the note head, facing down. Flags are always on the right side of the stem, and curve to the right. On stems facing up, the flags start at the top and curve down; for downward facing stems, the flags start at the bottom of the stem and curve up. When multiple sixteenth notes or eighth note

Eighth note

thumb|180px|right|Figure 1. An eighth note with stem facing up, an eighth note with stem facing down, and an eighth rest.thumb|right|180px|Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together....

s (or thirty-second notes, etc.) are next to each other, the flags may be connected with a beam

Beam (music)

A beam in musical notation is a thick line frequently used to connect multiple consecutive eighth notes , or notes of shorter value , and occasionally rests...

, like the notes in Figure 2. Note the similarities in notating sixteenth notes and eighth note

Eighth note

thumb|180px|right|Figure 1. An eighth note with stem facing up, an eighth note with stem facing down, and an eighth rest.thumb|right|180px|Figure 2. Four eighth notes beamed together....

s. Similar rules apply to smaller divisions such as thirty-second note

Thirty-second note

In music, a thirty-second note or demisemiquaver is a note played for 1/32 of the duration of a whole note...

s (demisemiquavers) and sixty-fourth note

Sixty-fourth note

In music notation, a sixty-fourth note or hemidemisemiquaver is a note played for 1/64 of the duration of a whole note . It lasts half as long as a thirty-second note ....

s (hemidemisemiquavers).

In Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

, U+266C (♬) is a pair of beamed semiquavers.

The note derives from the semifusa in mensural notation

Mensural notation

Mensural notation is the musical notation system which was used in European music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600."Mensural" refers to the ability of this system to notate complex rhythms with great exactness and flexibility...

. However, semifusa also designates the modern sixty-fourth note in Spanish.

The name of this note (and rest) in European languages varies greatly:

Language	note name	rest name
Dutch	zestiende noot	zestiende rust
German	Sechzehntelnote	Sechzehntelpause
French	double-croche	quart de soupir
Italian	semicroma	pausa di semicroma
Spanish	semicorchea	silencio de semicorchea
Portuguese	semicolcheia	pausa de semicolcheia
Russian	шестнадцатая нота	шестнадцатая пауза
Greek	δέκατο έκτο	παύση δεκάτου έκτου